January, 2013

This is my quesadilla version of Cooking Light’s tempeh fajitas. The marinade and fajita style onions and peppers are delicious but Robbie didn’t like how the fajita always fell apart on him. I’m an admitted cheese addict and I like to throw in some spinach wherever I can so I prefer the quesadilla way too.

In a small saucepan, combine the first seven ingredients and bring to a boil.

While you’re waiting for the marinade to boil, prepare the tempeh. Cut it in half horizontally then cut each half into six pieces lengthwise. Place the tempeh in a dish that won’t melt. I used a glass brownie pan.

Pour the hot marinade over the tempeh and let it marinate for at least an hour in the fridge.

While the tempeh is marinating, cut the onion and green bell pepper into strips, fajita-style.

Once your tempeh has completed its marinating you can begin cooking up your onion and pepper strips. Spray a skillet with some olive oil and heat it to medium heat. Add the onion and pepper strips and cook until they start to brown but are still crisp.

Set the onion and pepper strips aside and use the same skillet to brown the tempeh in vegetable oil. I cook it for about 6 minutes on each side while periodically drizzling more marinade on the upturned side. Flip over and repeat with the other side.

While you’re waiting on the tempeh to brown you can begin to construct the quesadillas by putting a tortilla on a plate for each person eating. Spread shredded cheese on the bottom half of each tortilla.

When the tempeh is ready, remove it from the heat. Arrange 3-4 tempeh strips on top of the cheese section of each tortilla. Top with a generous amount of grilled pepper and onion strips. Next, place spinach leaves on top and sprinkle some more cheese on top of that.

Fold the quesadillas over and cook them in olive oil in the same pan you’ve been using. Flip over once the first side is starting to brown. Cut into quarters and top with your favorite salsa.

I only got three quesadillas out of this because I ran out of tempeh. There was enough of everything else to make more so add in another package of tempeh to get 4-6 quesadillas.

This is something I used to make when I was a single lady because it’s fast, easy, and makes enough to eat a few times. I also happen to think it tastes amazing and, if you get a low sugar BBQ sauce and don’t get crazy with the bread and (optional) cheese topping, it’s not bad for you either.

A shot of the Sloppy Joe filling. First thing I’ve cooked at our new house!

1. Chop the onion and bell peppers into a medium-sized chunks.
2. Heat some vegetable oil in a large-ish pan.
3. Saute the onion and bell peppers for a couple of minutes. I like to keep the veggies on the crisp side for this recipe.
4. Crumble the two packages of tempeh into the pan and stir to combine. Cook for about 5 minutes to brown the tempeh.
5. Pour a cup of BBQ sauce into the pan. Stir to combine and cook just until everything is warm.
6, Pile a ton of the tempeh mixture onto a toasted bun bottom, top with a slice of Swiss cheese, then top with the bun top.

The filling is going to squeeze out the sides of the bun but that’s part of the Sloppy Joe experience. Come armed with a fork and some napkins.

We’ve been so busy with packing for our big move to our very first house! We’re renting, not buying, but it’s still a big deal because neither of us have lived in any house other than our parents’. Knowing we’d be hungry and covered in dust and other dormant apartment nastiness from packing, I made this black bean soup yesterday morning and kept it cooking in the slow cooker all day so we could enjoy it for dinner last night.

I followed a recipe from my favorite slow cooker book, Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson. If you like soup, I definitely recommend this cookbook. I got to use my fabulous immersion blender for this recipe. Here’s a photo of the cooked soup before blending.

And here’s one after blending about half of the chunky ingredients to make a thicker soup. So good! A+ leftovers too.

For dinner tonight I made a very tasty Asian dish from Vegan Junk Food:225 Sinful Snacks that are Good for the Soul, a book by Lane Gold that I got for free for my Kindle app. You can see a copy of the recipe here. I made the following changes: skipped the noodles and cut the brown sugar in half in an attempt to be healthy, used a small sprinkle of crushed red pepper flakes instead of a red chili pepper because we can’t handle spicy stuff, skimped a little on the grated ginger since Robbie isn’t a big fan, and added two zucchini because zucchini is awesome.

Robbie and I both really enjoyed it. The sauce tastes a lot like the sauce on the stir-fry veggies we get as a side with the gigantic vegetarian hummus wrap at Prime Bar, but better because there’s tofu and it’s not make-your-nose-run spicy. 10/10 would make again!

I’ve been a vegetarian for over a decade now but back when I used to eat chicken I LOVED the bourbon chicken from the mall food court. I did some searching for a recipe for that sauce and found several on different sites that were pretty much the same. Since there appeared to be a bourbon sauce consensus, I went with this one from Food.com.

I followed the directions except for the simmer the excess sauce for 20 minutes then pour it over rice part. Instead I stir fried some vegetables and poured the sauce over them towards the end. The sauce is so good – sweet and spicy. Rolling the tofu pieces in flour and getting the oil nice and hot before adding the tofu to the pan made them crisp and firm on the outside and full of tasty marinade on the inside. The whole meal was pretty flipping delicious but really doesn’t taste like the mall chicken. Oh well, I’m not sad. It’s so good that it will join our stir fry repertoire anyway.